What's Your Best Nursing Ghost Story?

Nursing is a profession that often involves long lonely night shifts in eerie hospital wards. It's a perfect breeding ground for ghost stories. These stories often involve sightings of apparitions, strange noises, and unexplained events that are said to have taken place in hospitals, hospices, and other healthcare settings. Some of these stories are believed to be based on true events, while others are purely fictional. Regardless, they continue to captivate and intrigue both nurses and non-nurses alike - providing a spooky glimpse into the world of healthcare after dark.

I know you have seen and heard freaky things. Share your nursing ghost stories...

Specializes in ICU.

Not a thing which is unusual

I'm actually a student at the moment, but this is the story of my reason to go into nursing for hospice.

My MIL had been good friends with this woman, Georgia, all of her life. Her own mother was Georgia's best friend in childhood, which made Georgia something of a second mother-figure to my MIL. Georgia had no children of her own because of a tumor in her youth, so she had basically adopted my MIL and my MIL's brothers and sisters as her own and spoiled them rotten. She had even gone as far as leaving her house to our family in her will and making my MIL her primary in the last 10 years of her life (she lived to be 96).

Georgia was sharp as a tack up until her death and never lost any of her mental abilities. One of her hardest struggles though, because of this, was dealing with the loss of her body functions and the loss of dignity she felt, having us assume more and more responsibility for her ADLs. She decided to die at home and we all took shifts being with her and doing her care in the final 6 months.

In her last month, she began seeing a very tall man dressed in white in her bedroom. If we were staying with her at night, she'd suddenly give a shout and we'd wake up and come in. She'd be shouting "You get out of here! Stop bothering me! I can't do it!" and there would never be anyone there. She'd be upset and would always want to know why we let this tall stranger into her room in the middle of the night, completely irritated with us. We always slept in her living room, which one would have to walk through to get to her room, and never saw this man. He would come to her and tell her to get up and walk to him, but she had lost function of her legs and would yell at him that she couldn't do it, that she wasn't strong enough.

He came to visit her 4-5 times before her death.

The day she died, one of my friends was there for the few hours I was out running errands for my family. My friend was snoozing on the couch because Georgia had been in a coma for three days and was in the quiet, last stage. My friend said that suddenly, she had been jerked awake like someone was warning her, shaking her by the shoulder. She ran into the room to find Georgia taking her last, very quiet breaths. She sang a soft song and Georgia passed on. She was upset later by the experience, not because the death was scary, but because she could not explain who had woken her up to witness Georgia's death.

Georgia had left her house to my family in her will and we moved in for a while after we repainted and renovated it to put it on the market. The most work we did was in the bathroom, putting in all new fixtures. Well, Georgia didn't seem to like to changes because even though we are confident that we put in good work in there, every single new screw has been undone over time and each fixture has fallen apart. Just the other day, the new cupboard door came off in my hand. I had to laugh because it was just so obviously unnatural. At first I thought it was my kids doing it one fixture at a time, but the cupboard had to be unscrewed from the inside and we have childlocks on those so my kids can't get to the chemicals and medicines. I keep apologizing out loud to Georgia for changing her bathroom, but her old fixtures were just not going to be appealing to new homeowners.

Specializes in ICU 3+ years, travel nurse 1+ years.

LOVE this thread! As a travel nurse I can safely say I have worked at many hosiptals. I always love hearing all the stories that each hospital has, because you know that every hospital is haunted (according to the night shift!). At the hospital I currently am at they have stories of their own, which is somewhat surprising because this hospital was built on farmland in 2009, so it's basically brand-new. Apparently the farmer who owned the land didn't want a hospital to be built on it, but the hospital won, the farmer gave up his land, and during construction of the hospital the farmer died (of natural causes, nothing suspicious). On a walk-thru of the hospital some big-wigs were giving a tour, and apparently when they walked past an empty room (no patients had been allowed in the hosiptal yet) they saw a man standing there in overalls and a flannel shirt. When they backed up to check it out nobody was there. Maybe it was the farmer??

There is a room designated as the 'hospice room' which also gets used as an overflow ortho-surgical room, and I HATE it when I have patients in there because of this: one night a nurse had an ortho patient in the room. The nurse kept seeing shadows in the room, and also saw a white mist. She never told the patient about what she saw. The next day the patient asked to have a room switch because of the shadows. Neither the nurse nor the patient told each other what they had seen, so they each saw it on their own, scary! I always close the door to that room when nobody is in it.

Here's a creepy thing that happened, and I saw it with my own eyes. Security has cameras all over the hospital. One of the cameras is outside angled towards a big heavy metal door that you need a badge to get it to open. All of a sudden on one of the tapes the door whips open, and stays open for approx a minute and a half. The door is dang hard to push open, and slams shut immediately when you let go of it. Right before you see the door slam open for a split second is a dark shadow on the window of the door, and then it looks like an orb shooting out of the doorway when the door is open. I know it sounds totally crazy, and so I had to have security show me the tape so I could see it with my own eyes! They checked to see who had opened the door w/their badge and nobody had opened it for at least 20 minutes. So it basically opened on it's own. That one made me have nightmares, and I have goosebumps writing it!

And of course, the thing that all these hospitals have in common is there's always a ghost in the OR, call lights go off in rooms where there aren't any patients, bed alarms go off, etc. I guess some people never want to leave.... :eek:

My mom and myself always considered ourselves 'sensitive'. My mother's father recently passed away and I live across the country from where he lived. On the night he died, my bedroom light went on by itself in the middle of the night. It has never done this. I looked around to see my husband fast asleep (no one else lives in the house) so I quickly turned the light off and got up to go to the bathroom. One of my arms was freezing cold but my face wasn't cold so I thought it was odd. While I was in the bathroom, I felt an intensely cold chill and thought maybe my husband had left a window open. I checked and it wasn't cold outside the bathroom and the windows were closed.

The night before we flew out for the funeral, I woke up to go to the bathroom, my husband was asleep but the downstairs light was on. It had been turned off when my husband went to sleep. Neither of these has ever happened and even turning on the downstairs lamp is quite difficult as it takes some force to turn the knob.

I'm not sure if my grandfather was checking in on me or if my mourning had caught the attention of 'something'.

Specializes in medical surgical, oncology.

these stories are all giving me the chills!

Specializes in SNU/SNF/MedSurg, SPCU Ortho/Neuro/Spine.
The best I have heard is from a nurse who said that one night she was floated to oncology at the hospital she used to work at. She was given a patient who was passing away and had been unconscious for several days. At one point during the night the nurse went into the room and the patient was at the top of the bed and looked at her and said, "don't let them take me!", the nurse was freaked out and asked her who was going to take her and she said that black thing up there and pointed up in the air. This patient died within minutes.

A similar story happened to my first death, the patient did not want to die... When I went to get her water and call the family in to say good bye, she was gone! When I was leaving the unit I kept feeling her right behind my neck (must have been all in my mind) but it made me run through that huge dark garage at night... I wanted to scream... I think I ran a red light that night.... It took me 6 months to be able to help out with post mortum....:eek:

Past and current residents of a certain room have repeatedly been heard talking to and seeing children in there. The room they are in was the morgue back in the day.

please keep these coming. Have not had an experience with ghosts, etc. but

love these stories from those who have!!!:yeah:

I am absolutely addicted to this thread!

Not a nursing story but i'm sure you paranormal lovers won't mind if I post it anyways :)

Ok so this was told to me by a close friend. We're all uni students and this particular friend does not lie. Plus it's about a house just around the corner from our place -

So my friend's fiance and 3 other friends moved into a brand new 4 bedroom flat. From the very first night they moved in they would hear someone running in the hallway banging on everyone's doors (typical of guys), this would happen when the guys would be in bed. Everyone would be in bed but they would all think that one of the other guys was doing it.

Finally after a week they all had enough and confronted each other about the racket every night. All 4 of them denied it. By now they were all spooked. So that night after they all went to bed, they hear the same thing again - somebody running past their bedrooms and banging on the doors. This time they were really ******* themselves. They heard really loud bangs like heavy stuff being thrown around. They all jumped out of bed and ran out into the living room -

They found all their furniture upside down.... AND, the walls in the living room had been CLAWED. Like really deep huge claws.

THEN as they were standing there thinking what in Gods name happened they saw black footprints appearing on the ceiling coming towards them!!

They took off from the house and rang the landlord trying to tell him that they cant stay there anymore. The landlord comes over and says - well, you guys lasted the longest. The other tenants dont even last one night.

True story :) more to come

My sister is a nurse and her first job after graduating was on the cancer floor of the hospital where she worked. She hadn't been working long at all when the call light came on in a dying patients room she was taking care of on her shift. He was an atheist and was hysterically screaming it's hot, the flames are burning me! I don't want to go with the demons to hell, please don't let me die, please!!! She said within minutes he passed and nothing could calm him.

Her husband is a doctor and had a very similar experience with a patient he was taking care of in a nursing home. Fascinating thread.

I used to work in a very old hospital in London UK - it's since been knocked down and a new one built.

The old hospital had a main building which was only two stories - ground floor and level one - the rest of the hospital was a lot of old nissan huts which were put up during the war.

On level one of the old building were two wards - both general medical - one male and one female originally but when I was there they were both mixed.

I was working night duty one night and the two RN's I was working with told me this story of one night duty when they were working with a male nurse. He had gone to the ground floor to the vending machine to get everyone a coke. As he approached the lift on the way back there was a priest coming the other way from the ER. He was in full regalia - wide brimmed hat, long black robes - which 20 years ago in London wasn't unusual. The nurse pressed the button for the lift and the doors opened as the priest got there. The nurse smiled and said hello to the priest - the priest smiled back. The nurse motioned to the priest to go first which he did then the nurse followed, pressed the button for the first floor then stood facing the lift doors with the priest stood behind him. It only took the lift a moment to get to the first floor and in a effort to be helpful the nurse was going to ask the priest which ward he wanted - but the priest had vanished!

When the nurse got to the ward he was shaking uncontollably and could barely speak.

After the nurses had calmed down he started telling them what had just happened the after hours manager turned up - she'd seen the priest from one of the huts enter the hospital and had come to ask why she hadn't been informed that someone was sick enough to receive last rites.

The male nurse never worked in that hospital again - I was his replacement - I always took the stairs!

Specializes in Palliative, Onc, Med-Surg, Home Hospice.

One night, around 10:30, I was sitting at the nurses station talking to a couple of my CNA's. We had turned some of the lights down, so it was dim. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw someone walk past. I asked the CNA's who had walked past and they both looked at me like was I crazy. I know I saw someone, so I got up and walked down the hall to check my residents. Something possessed me to check on one resident in particular. Her roommate had died 5 mos before. Everything was okay but her room was freezing. It is normally hot. I went down to another unit to chat with the nurses there and halfway down that hall, I saw the form of the resident who had passed away. By the time I got to the nurses station, she was gone but I was freezing. And I am never cold.

One of my co-workers insists that the resident follows her down the hall. She can hear footsteps at night.

+ Join the Discussion